


Ribs

by kayr0ss



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Diakko, Diannako, F/F, Growing, Hope, LWA, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22513309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayr0ss/pseuds/kayr0ss
Summary: [LWA, Diakko, growing up, timing, kind of angsty at the start, BUT very hopeful, inspired by a song ty Lorde, emotional author, I guess a song fic?]You don’t always need to get it right the first time. | Growing into the world
Relationships: Diana Cavendish & Atsuko "Akko" Kagari, Diana Cavendish/Atsuko "Akko" Kagari
Comments: 7
Kudos: 114





	Ribs

**_You can listen to the song when the fic cues it, but it might be confusing so feel free to listen to Ribs by Lorde after._ **

\--

“We’re just so—so---”

Akko couldn’t look at Diana. She bit her lips, trembling, and somehow the brunette knew that meeting those eyes would bring her over the edge and straight into bawling.

“—so young,” she finally supplied, voice wavering.

Diana’s lips were pressed into a thin line. _Keep it in,_ she clenched her jaw. _Keep it in because the slightest crack will make you fall apart._

“I never thought you’d be the one worried about that between the two of us,” the blonde witch managed a dry laugh. She looked down at her hand, finding it out of place so far away from Akko’s. She wanted to hold her.

Akko had no response, though—and reaching over didn’t feel like an option.

They sat on the grass of Luna Nova’s grounds, the sky a deep, inky violet dotted by stars whose formations they’ve memorized after years of instruction. Did a good day really need to feel so… bad? Graduation had crept upon them like a vine left unchecked, and before they knew it they were being pulled apart—apart by continents, time zones, and the sudden realization that they didn’t know if tomorrow promised them the opportunity to stay together.

“When did we put up this wall?” Diana finally broke through, hugging her knees close to her chest while she lifted her gaze towards Orion’s belt.

“W—When we started worrying?” Akko sputtered out, shaky and unsure.

“When we realized,” Diana wondered out loud, “that things aren’t as absolute as we thought, maybe.”

It was a bitter, melancholic thought. Responsibility is something Diana is used to—and growing older and into the world just meant more of the same. She could take it. It wouldn’t be easy, but it wouldn’t be anything new. But Akko—she spared a quick glance to the quivering girl sitting so close yet so far away—Akko wasn’t used to this. The fraying of their rope began when Diana asked a question that Akko was all-to used to skipping: _“How do we make this work?”_

 _“We’ll wing it!”_ she blocked away the query without so much as a thought. But that was two years before the absolute separation of graduating and living half-way across the globe from each other.

A year before their term ended, Akko’s absolute rebuttals had turned into, _“We’ve always managed… somehow.”_

Three months before the term ended, when asked again, Akko grew irritable. _“Why are you always thinking about the future?! We have right now.”_

Suddenly time was up.

Diana could feel thorns press into her chest—she couldn’t take it, _no_ —“can’t we break through?”

Two hours before they had to leave campus for the last time as students, Akko drew a teary-eyed sigh.

“I’m scared.”

“You’ve never been before.”

“How do I fit in in that life of yours?”

“We’ll break down this wall.”

“I—” Akko sobbed into her arms. “I—I’m sorry.”

All the constraint had finally become overwhelming. With a heavy, shaky breath, a small sob had broken through.

She cried, but Diana didn’t want this to be the last image of the first girl she ever loved.

“Maybe time will tear the wall away,” she rubbed at her eyes, looking up towards the Big Dipper. Hoping, holding onto a thin thread and _hoping_ —because that is all she has to hold on to for now.

* * *

The sudden silence of music stopping jolted Diana awake. She blinked her tiredness away, eyes scanning her immediate surroundings, registering that she was on a bus, in a foreign city she had called home for quite a few years by now.

 _A dream… a memory?_ She hadn’t thought about _her_ in a while.

Luckily, she wasn't due to disembark until the next stop, and she leaned her shoulder against the glass window while the familiar hiss of the door closing mixed in with the ambient noise of a busy city—it was all a little muffled through muting of her earphones. The sky was dark enough for the first set of city lights to flicker on, but still light enough that the scenery was basked in blue instead of black.

_[ Ribs – Lorde ]_

_Huh._ She snuck glance to her smart watch, matching the title of next song to the ethereal voices and synthesizers that made up its introduction. She nearly laughed when the first droplets of rain pitter-pattered against the window pane, thinking that the view of lights blurring past her in a blue-and-violet sky matched the song poetically. _Good enough to be a—a—_ she wrestled with her train of thought, looking for a world a special girl from years past had taught her. _Ah. A music video._

She looked up to and wondered if she’d see the big dipper if the clouds didn’t decide to hide it for this evening.

_[The drink you spilt all over me]_

Soft beeping and a polite announcement let her know that it was time alight. She pulled out a folded umbrella, in much too contemplative a mood to feel vexed at the sudden downpour. It wasn’t so heavy, anyway.

The walk to her apartment was a different experience together when you couldn’t hear the noise—the music drowned out any other sound, and she somehow felt like an outsider; like she was still on the bus and watching other people go about their lives through a glass pane. A new to experience the monotony of going to work, school, and then coming home. Of growing older.

_[The drink you spilt all over me – “lovers spit” left on repeat  
mom & dad let me stay home, it drives you crazy getting old  
The drink you spilt all over me – “lovers spit” left on repeat  
mom & dad let me stay home, it drives you crazy getting old’]_

There’s a soft lull in the music while it braces for another act; and in this space—as if the music decided to take a breath—she heard jarring familiar,

“Mou!”

Diana takes a sharp breath, and nearly makes a full 180-degree turn.

“I’m never going to find my apartment before dark at this rate!”

Her mouth hangs open but she doesn’t speak—the blonde witch finds herself enraptured; waiting for the apparition in front of her to finish speaking as if to confirm that this was— _real._

“Kami-sama, help me!” Red eyes rolled in exasperation and she’s talking to no-one in particular. She still has that silly ponytail sticking up from her hair. The brunette looks around, no doubt trying to discern if North was actually South or vice-versa by the way she was turning her cellular phone around and over.

_Maybe time can tear it down._

Diana is walking towards her, afraid that she’ll disappear behind every pedestrian that obstructs her line of sight. She tries several times to call out; to _say her name_ , but it gets caught in her throat and before the fourth try the woman in question catches her line of sight.

The sparkle in her eyes, and the way her mouth had formed a perfect ‘O’ spoke a thousand more words than ‘hello’

“H—Hello.” But Diana went for ‘hello’ anyway. “Akko.”

“Diana,” Akko replies, eyes tracing the blonde witch’s features as if to confirm this wasn’t some scam. “It’s been…”

“…seven or eight?” Diana can’t help but beat her to it. She didn’t realize she was keeping track. “Years, I meant.”

There’s a tentative silence, poorly filled in by the sound of idle chatter, footsteps, and engines cruising down the street. A night-time noodle stall is setting up shop near where they’re standing, and the lack of words was beginning to get unbearable.

“Is that gray hair?”

Akko breaks the tension away like it was nothing. Diana missed that grin so, _so_ much.

“It’s the lighting.”

She also missed feeling that mixture of tenderness and annoyance uniquely caused by this woman.

“ _Suuure_ it is.”

Diana rolled her eyes playfully. “You’re a few thousand kilometers away from home.”

“According to this app, actually, I’m only about 20 yards away. Just don’t know which direction those yards might be.”

Diana slips into an easy smile, “I’m just down the street.”

They don’t notice that the rain has stopped, and that the big dipper is sparkling fondly above them through a clearing in the clouds. The wall is gone—and while Diana looks into crimson eyes she wonders if hope is a thread that pulls them apart so they can be stitched together in the right time and places.

“Shall I show you around the city?”

Akko's hand feels familiar when she takes Diana’s open palm. She laughs lightly. “We have to find my new house first."

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hello. I’m writing from the heart and what I’m currently going through. I don’t know what to do with this longing and hope, so I’ll just turn it into a story. Ribs by Lorde could give more perspective so I encourage you to listen


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